Virginity prompt
How did I lose my virginity?
That is a question of careful composition.
The camera angle, just so, tilted just like that to get the angle of her shoulder, me grinning up on her. No skin. No flesh. We’re fully clothed. But my hand has crept under her shirt on her belly. It was smooth and soft under my fingers.
I tickle her again. She screams in laughter. Her head thrown back so the camera catches the mischief and glee in her eyes, the blond hair tumbling back.
The wrestling starts again. A playful struggle. We fall off her father’s couch.
The camera pans left. Couch. End table. Family pictures.
The laughter out of scene stops. There are wet sounds.
Her shirt, baby blue and 100% cotton lands on the end table beside the picture of her at the Winter formal. Her hair had been piled above her head in tiny ringlets. Close up on her eyes, a richer blue than her dress.
Super impose her eyes wide and glittering, pan out on her kiss bruised lips and her hair, in an utter disarray over the grey off the carpet. My hand slides out of scene, her eyes widen then close, her neck arched up, and there is a crash.
Pull out, just enough to see our heads turn and the bare curve of our shoulders. Swing the camera to show the vase of silk flowers fallen off the coffee table besides us on the floor. Close up on the white rose petal.
Sounds, laughter, those wet sounds, louder gasps and the magazines slide off on the table. Glassy ads of red lipped vixens.
Her lips are red where I bit them, but that isn’t for the camera. It follows the texture of the carpet, swinging round the coffee table to a montage of close ups, starting where her bare toes with sparkly nail polish are curled. Then the bend of a knee. The dip of her waist, her knuckles as she holds on to the edge of the coffee table.
Nothing indecent.
Erotic, but not indecent.
Camera angles, continuity, cutting, close ups and composition. The five C’s of film making. To make a tribute to an act, a tribute sans the fumbling and sweat slick skin and embarrassment in between the ecstasy and.
And I never knew what she told her mother happened to that vase that broke.
Or the silk rose I stole.
Mark Cohen,
From the Musical Rent
Words: 405